by War;Bluegrass If Trouble Don't Kill Me: A Family's Story of Brotherhood
• • •
The band left Winston-Salem in an all-night, two-car caravan and crossed into Virginia well after midnight, just hours after their final show date in Winston-Salem. On the Virginia side, the road began to curve back and forth like a drunk trying to find his way home from the corner bar. The boys passed through Henry and Franklin counties, bypassing the twins’ old stomping grounds in Bassett, and eventually broke through the wall of the Blue Ridge and twisted downward into a valley that seemed as wide as the ocean. On the valley floor, hugged by mountain ridges on all sides, lay the city of Roanoke.
Roanoke, the Magic City. It earned that nickname in the 1880s because of the way it seemed to appear from nowhere after the railroads came through. Before the boomtown of Roanoke, there had been the village of Big Lick, named for the marshy salt licks that had attracted wild animals—and the Indians and pioneers who hunted them. After the Norfolk & Western and Shenandoah Valley railroads crossed their lines there in 1882, Big Lick exploded overnight into a rowdy, brawling town that drew wild men the way it had wild game. Workers who labored in the railroad shops came in all shapes and shades—they were Greek, Lebanese, Irish, German, and African, not to mention the Big Lick holdover Brits and Scots. Saloons and houses of ill repute provided off-hours recreation for the men who made up the bulk of the population. Decent ladies were mostly absent during the boom years. Big Lick began to change its image in 1882, when it renamed itself the more lyrical Roanoke, from the Roanoke River that flowed through the valley.
By 1940, Roanoke had matured and settled down into its conservative middle age. The railroad still provided most of the work and political power, as railroad bosses often became mayors. Banks, hospitals, and hotels dominated the skyline. Roanoke was still a hopping place, with streetcars, automobiles, and pedestrians all jockeying for the right of way on Campbell Avenue beneath a web of telephone and telegraph wires. The heart of downtown was the City Market District, where vendors hawked vegetables and live chickens inside the City Market Building, a long, low brick structure with a spacious second floor suitable for dances and basketball games. Entertainment was easy to find in Roanoke. Five downtown movie theaters stood within three blocks of one another. For all the city’s vibrancy, however, Roanoke only had one major radio station—WDBJ, which had signed on in 1924 when a young electrician named Ray Jordan fiddled three tunes for a broadcast that was heard by a rich gentleman across town who owned the only radio receiver in the valley. By 1940, Ray Jordan was the boss, and WDBJ was saturating the mountains of southwest Virginia with five thousand watts of radio magic.
• • •
The caravan followed its directions into town along Franklin Road in the predawn hours of Sunday, April 14, 1940. Roy missed the turn for Kirk Avenue, but Bill took it, only to hear Clayton holler that he was going the wrong way on a one-way street. Since it was still early, Kirk Avenue was empty and they avoided a head-on collision, but it was not the grand entrance they had hoped to make in Roanoke.
Bill proceeded the wrong way down Kirk Avenue, and Clayton immediately pointed out the gray-brick building with the large neon sign hanging vertically on the front, its bright red electric letters reading top to bottom “WDBJ.” Bill parked, Roy pulled up (having circled around and finding the proper way on Kirk Avenue), and the Blue Ridge Entertainers caught a few winks in their cars before going inside to discover what Roanoke had in store for them.
The band did not know that, two weeks earlier, the Roanoke Times had announced the Blue Ridge Entertainers’ impending arrival with great fanfare inside the Sunday newspaper. A banner headline on the April 7, 1940, edition read “WDBJ to Sign On At 6:30 A.M. Beginning Monday, April 15.” The subheadlines read “Early Risers to Receive Service” and “Blue Ridge Entertainers Take Program April 22.” Adorning the article was a photograph of the Entertainers from their pre-Clayton-and-Saford days, posing around a microphone, a pile of fan mail at the boys’ feet. The caption, which misspelled Tommy’s name as “Tommy Magnus” (a common mistake), stated in part that the Blue Ridge Entertainers “are widely known in North Carolina and South Carolina and have made a number of RCA Victor recordings.”
Now, here they were in Roanoke, without Tommy “Magnus” but with two handsome, talented twin brothers. In the coming weeks, people naturally assumed that the three Halls must be related, but the twins would set them straight. That is, unless they wanted to mess with the folks. Sometimes they’d tell fans that Roy was their daddy, a mean old cuss who had made them sleep outside in the firewood box as babies. Sometimes Roy was their uncle.
So that’s what people called him: Uncle Roy.
Their new radio announcer, Irving Sharp, called him that. A garrulous, paunchy young man with prematurely thinning hair and a wisp of a mustache, Sharp was part of a generation that had cut its teeth on radio, and he had a knack for knowing what audiences wanted to hear. He was a radio triple threat: He could sing, he could play the piano, and he could ad-lib right over the air. He was a cool customer, only twenty five, who easily dropped pitches for Dr Pepper into broadcasts as smoothly as taking a sip of pop. The Blue Ridge Entertainers hit it off immediately with Sharp. Pretty soon, Uncle Roy was calling him Cousin Irving.
• • •
The day they arrived, the Blue Ridge Entertainers toured WDBJ’s trio of studios and control room. Studio A was the largest of the three, capable of holding a couple dozen spectators who wanted to watch musicians play on the radio. The only people who ever showed up to sit in the studio were usually either hardcore radio nuts, a few music fans, or curious boys who admired the electrical equipment. Finding a seat was never a problem.
The station provided the band with accommodations in Mrs. Hankins’s boardinghouse across town in northwest Roanoke. The boys moved into their quarters on Sunday afternoon and planned out the program for Monday’s 6:30 a.m. debut.
On the morning of April 22, 1940, Roy Hall and His Blue Ridge Entertainers played the airwaves of WDBJ for the first time. The five musicians gathered in a circle around a single microphone on a stand. No recording or set list survives from that broadcast, but the format was surely similar to the group’s Winston-Salem programs: Roy strummed a G chord to kick-start the Dr Pepper theme song, “She’ll be drinking Dr Pepper when she comes.” Then Saford tore off on a fiddle tune, like, say, “Under the Double Eagle” or “Down Yonder.” Roy sang a couple of numbers, and then Saford probably fiddled another hot one, followed by a song by Bill and Wayne or a duet from the twins, such as “In the Pines.” They kept it up, switching between instrumentals and vocals, pushing Dr Pepper between every song like it was some magical elixir. “Drink a bite to eat, neighbors,” Irving Sharp, their announcer, probably said. As the old clock on the wall neared 7 a.m., they wrapped it up with another fiddle tune, as Irving told the audience he’d see ’em again tomorrow for another half hour of your favorite tunes and remember, “Enjoy life more. Drink Dr Pepper at ten, two, and four.”
The show went off well, as expected. What shocked everybody was the crowd of people who showed up at the station. Roanokers had heard that this band was red-hot. Studio A was jam-packed for the Blue Ridge Entertainers’ second radio program. The third day, the crowd spilled into the second-floor hallway and into Studio B, where the program was piped in over loudspeakers. The crowd was a mix of old and young: rough-looking men who wanted to hear a few tunes before trudging off to work, teenage boys killing time at the radio station before heading uptown to Jefferson High School, and—best of all—girls in their best dresses who came to see this hot band and who tried to catch the brown eyes of those handsome twins.
Roanoke had its share of hillbilly bands, many of them inspired by the same cowboy movies that Clayton and Saford had loved. Bands with names like the Texas Troubadours played regular shows on WDBJ, mixing cowboy songs, fiddle tunes, and a pop number or two. They were good, but they weren’t the Mainers—or the Callahans, Blue Sky Boys, or Monroes. After live radio broadcasts, they packed u
p their instruments and went to work at their real jobs. Nobody in Roanoke played music as a full-time career. Then Roy Hall showed up.
The Entertainers hadn’t booked any shows before arriving, not knowing the territory. On their second day at WDBJ, somebody sent a postcard inviting them to perform midweek at the Garden City school auditorium, a short drive south of Roanoke. The night of the show, the DeSoto with the bass fiddle strapped to the top wheeled down a quiet street toward the school and parked, and the boys toted their cases a good hundred yards to get to the venue. Hordes of people loitered outside around the schoolhouse, hanging around doorways and peering in windows. At first, the band thought somebody had goofed—did somebody book us the same night as a basketball game? Why are so many people here?
They were there to see the Blue Ridge Entertainers, of course.
The musicians were a sight in their black hats, white shirts, and dark jackets, all of them wearing wide neckties. They always dressed to the nines, even for the radio. “Never know who might show up,” Roy would tell them. This night, it appeared that all of Garden City and half of Roanoke had shown up.
They took the stage and set up Roy’s primitive public-address system: one microphone with two speakers, which folded neatly into an easy-to-carry case. The auditorium was packed with a couple hundred people, not counting those trying to sneak a peek from a door or a window. The set list has been lost to history. I know a hundred songs and fiddle tunes that Roy Hall was famous for playing—“Wabash Cannonball,” “Turkey in the Straw,” “Come Back, Little Pal,” “New San Antonio Rose,” “No Letter in the Mail Today,” “Come Back, Sweetheart,” “Sunny Tennessee,” “Rubber Dolly,” and dozens of others. But I have no idea what they played that night. All I can tell you is that they did not disappoint the overflowing crowd. By the weekend, postcards poured into WDBJ from every community within signal range. The Blue Ridge Entertainers were invited to play every schoolhouse, clubhouse, and outhouse in Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina. Roy answered every legitimate request. His demands were simple—the band would get 60 percent of the door. He would also sell his songbooks and maybe some records. The venues were eager to have the Blue Ridge Entertainers. The band would not lack work for the next two and a half years.
• • •
Everybody called Dorothy Wilbourne “Dot.” She lived on Massachusetts Avenue, right across the street from Mrs. Hankins’s boardinghouse where this band of young musicians had set up camp. She hardly noticed her new neighbors, but Saford soon took a liking to her. She was a pretty, tiny, spunky girl—a wonderfully gifted musician, singer, and dancer who performed acrobatic routines during dance recitals. She also happened to be fourteen years old.
Saford was twenty, which didn’t seem to matter to Dot’s mom. In fact, Lottie Wilbourne was probably the first person to meet the new boys across the street. She was definitely the one who introduced Dot to Saford.
Saford the showman, the show-off, was hard to overlook. Dot wasn’t impressed. For one thing, he was too old for her, and for another, she already had a boyfriend who was closer to her own age. Saford had his share of girlfriends, too. Everybody in the band did. By the time they’d been in town two weeks, Roy Hall and His Blue Ridge Entertainers were the biggest celebrities and most eligible bachelors in Roanoke. Dozens of well-dressed, heavily made-up girls crowded the band’s engagements and elbowed their way into the radio studio. Girls sent cards and letters—addressed simply either to Saford or Clayton, WDBJ, Roanoke, Va.—and requested songs and inquired about marital status. When the weather warmed up in the spring of 1940 and the band began playing outdoor jamborees, girls ambushed the twins armed with cameras and lipstick, begging the boys to pose for photographs. The twins always obliged. They made no secret of their love for the ladies. In their bio for one of Roy Hall’s songbooks, they signed off with the admission “They especially like brown eyes.”
Roanoke was a smorgasbord of potential girlfriends. Because the band played shows six nights a week, the musicians used the rare night off to go out on different types of dates entirely. On more than one occasion Saford asked two girls out on the same night. When that happened, he’d just pawn off one girl on Clayton, who protested at first, then relented when he realized this was an easy way to meet girls.
“What’ll we talk about?” Clayton wanted to know. “I don’t even know this girl.”
Saford shrugged off the question. “That don’t matter,” he said. “Just tell her how pretty she is and let her take care of the rest of it.”
• • •
Soon, however, Saford was smitten with Dot, whose mother encouraged the couple to spend time together and get to know each other. Roy wasn’t happy when Saford started spending more and more time across Massachusetts Avenue at the Wilbournes’. For one thing, Saford was getting sloppy with his music. He skipped practices and was late for shows. The other problem was more worrisome: Dot was jailbait. Roy knew that if his fiddle player and primary drawing card got mixed up in a sex scandal with a child, the whole mess would be bad for business.
Dot had become a fixture, however. She started showing up at show dates around town, sitting in the crowd (often with her parents; she would’ve gone to even more performances, but she couldn’t stay out late on school nights), watching all those other females with their painted faces and mountains of hair swooning over the twins. She ignored Saford’s wannabe lovers as best she could, which was more than Saford ever did for her. He rarely let affection go unrequited.
Dot followed the band to as many shows as she could. During the day, she attended the Catholic school at St. Andrew’s church, where she excelled in music and art studies. Catholic school didn’t mean a thing to Saford, whose religious training was sketchy at best. He’d gone to various Methodist, Moravian, and, of course, Baptist churches in The Hollow, often with cousins or friends, but he didn’t know the difference between a Catholic and a cougar—and Dot seemed part both. She loved music and dancing; she was so good on the piano she taught neighborhood children on Massachusetts Avenue. Saford was ready to convert.
• • •
Soon, Clayton had a girl, too. Reba Holland was a chestnut-haired, blue-eyed beauty, whose brothers had gone hog-wild over the Blue Ridge Entertainers and dragged the family to show dates all over town. Reba was a baby, too, barely fifteen, when she met Clayton at the WDBJ studios. Clayton began spending his free time at the Holland house in the hilly southeast section of town. Reba was the second oldest of four, which included big brother Marvin; little brother Henry, Jr.; and baby sister Elinor. Reba’s dad, Henry, Sr., who went by his middle name, “Oake,” drove a city bus that included the Blue Ridge Entertainers’ neighborhood on its route. Clayton often rode Oake Holland’s bus downtown and became quick pals with his new girlfriend’s father. The men played catch in the backyard on Sunday afternoons, while the women fried up chicken and boiled potatoes for dinner. Reba’s mother, Thelma, liked Clayton immediately because he liked the Bible (either he had paid attention in Sunday school, or he was doing anything he could to impress his gal’s parents). He was a good boy.
The only thing that irritated Clayton about the Holland household was Elinor, the annoying baby sister. It seemed that every time Clayton and Reba were about to sit close to each other, at the last possible second Elinor jumped between them. When the lovebirds finally did get some time alone, either on the couch or on the front porch, here came Elinor again, usually carrying a cat she called “Kitty Ninju.”
“Pet Kitty Ninju,” she said to Clayton, flopping the mad gray kitty onto his lap. Clayton didn’t care much for cats, especially one that had been dropped on his privates.
Elinor was also a little extortionist.
“I want fifty cents so I can get some ice cream,” Elinor demanded of Clayton one afternoon while he and Reba sat on the Hollands’ living room couch, “or else I’ll tell Mama y’all are out here kissing.”
After Elinor pulled this stunt a few times, Clayton beg
an filling his coat pockets with quarters, dimes, and nickels (when the price of admission to your show dates is thirty cents, you end up with lots of change). Whenever Elinor attempted to blackmail, Clayton just pointed her to the coat tree in the corner.
That was about the only complaint Clayton had. As he and Saford prepared to celebrate their twenty-first birthday in this rollicking railroad town, the twins were popular and successful, and, to beat it all, they had girlfriends. Not bad for two bastards from The Hollow.
• • •
The Blue Ridge Entertainers’ radio programs were a hoot. The music was good, and Roy and the announcer, “Cousin Irving” Sharp, quickly developed an on-air repartee that played off their folksy personas. In an age when radio announcers aimed to impress audiences and station managers with their oratorical skills and erudite delivery, Cousin Irving stood out like a bicycle horn in an orchestra. He was spontaneous, a good improviser, and utterly unflappable. He loved to yuck it up with the band and laughed heartily and sincerely at unplanned jokes. Roy even set aside portions of each broadcast for Irving’s solo numbers on a Hammond B-3 organ or piano (or sometimes both in one song). For a city like Roanoke, which was becoming increasingly sophisticated and modernized but still allowed its citizens to raise cows and chickens, Irving Sharp was the pitch-perfect voice that appealed to the ears of both railroad magnates and mill hands.
Irving started each program with a monologue that went something like:
Well, howdy, friends and neighbors, it’s Dr Pepper Time, another half hour of your favorite music as played by Roy Hall and His Blue Ridge Entertainers. Friends, the weekend is coming up and you don’t want to get caught short when it comes to having enough Dr Pepper on hand. Dr Pepper comes in an economical six-bottle carton, perfect to get you through the weekend. Pick up a couple cartons. It won’t set you back and your family will never enjoy anything more than Dr Pepper. It’s refreshing and with its pure blend of fruit juices, it’ll keep you wide awake and alert through whatever you’ve got planned. Remember, friends, Dr Pepper, it’s good for life. Dr Pepper Time starting out with “Cotton-Eyed Joe.” Saford on the fiddle, let ’er go, boys, let ’er go.…